The Netherlands

The Nijmegen-site of the IMpACT consortium, chaired by Prof. Franke, focuses on gene-to-disease pathways in adult-ADHD. The interest of the lab is unveiling the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders in general, with a special interest in ADHD. From over 300 patients and healthy controls, genotypic as well as phenotypic data (MRI, neuropsychological, psychiatric interview) data is collected. Data collection is done in a design, in which patients and healthy controls are continuously being included. Close collaboration between the Psychiatry department and the Genetics department is central in this process.

Barbara Franke

Barbara Franke is the chair of the IMpACT group. She is a Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at the Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen. There, she heads the Researchlab for Multifactorial Diseases and is a Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. Her main interests centre around the identification of genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorders – especially ADHD – and their characterization at the molecular, cell and brain level. For this, she is an active participant or member of the management team of many international collaborations, like the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, the IMAGE consortium on childhood ADHD and the ENIGMA consortium on imaging genetics. In addition, her lab carries out research using bioinformatics approaches, animal research using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model for ADHD and neuroimaging research in order to characterize biological pathways from gene to disease. Barbara has (co-)authored over 300 papers, many in high impact journals like Nature Genetics, Nature, Molecular Psychiatry and American Journal of Psychiatry.

Jan Buitelaar

Professor Jan Buitelaar is leading the research group on neuropsychiatric and developmental disorders, principal investigator at the Radboud University Medical Centre, and head of Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University Centre. His research in focused on ADHD, autism, and aggression and impulsivity related disorders. He applies an interdisciplinary approach that integrates clinical and phenotypic studies, neuroimaging, cognitive research, genetics, pharmacology and preclinical approaches. He received the research award of the Dutch Society for Psychiatry in 2011, and is main applicant of a large number of international and national awarded grants. He published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers.

Reseachers

Alejandro Arias Vasquez

My entire research career has been focused on the understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying the way the brain functions in general and dysfunctions in disease. Currently, my interest is focused on finding genes associated with the variation of brain structure and function and use these genes as risk-conferring candidates for complex diseases.

My experience includes research on the genetic causes of Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease, stroke, Major depressive Disorder and currently, ADHD. In order to identify genes related to these complex diseases, I have applied the most up-to-date statistical-genetics techniques available. In 2006 I finished my PhD where I was able to identify new loci linked to AD, suggested the presence of new candidate genes and replicated previously associated candidate genes and linked loci for this disease. In 2007 I moved to the RUNMC and joined the Research lab for Multifactorial Diseases (PI Prof. Barbara Franke) at the Departments of Human Genetics, Psychiatry & Cognitive Neuroscience and have successfully performed multiple genetic epidemiology analysis searching for genetic variants involved in the genetic susceptibility for ADHD, MDD and brain structure. At this moment, I'm involved in the core group of the biggest brain imaging genetics consortium in the world, the ENIGMA consortium, from which our group is a founding member (http://enigma.loni.ucla.edu/). Further, I'm also involved in the development of methodology to proper test gene-gene interaction effects applying novel Bayesian based analysis techniques

Martine Hoogman

My name is Martine Hoogman and I’m currently working as a post doctoral researcher on the IMpACT project. I obtained my masters in clinical neuropsychology, University of Amsterdam, and in 2006 I moved to the eastern part of the Netherlands to work at the department of Psychiatry (Radboud Medical Centre, Nijmegen). Here I started setting up the Dutch part of the IMpACT project. This resulted in my PhD thesis entitled ‘Imaging genetics of adult ADHD. I’m fascinated by everything related to ‘imaging genetics’; investigating associations between genes and brain anatomy and brain functioning. In my current position as a postdoc affiliated with the Genetics Department (Radboud Medical Centre Nijmegen) I will continue to work on unraveling the pathway between genes, brains and ADHD. Next to working on IMpACT, I’m involved in the BIG\Cognomics project (www.cognomics.nl), a large healthy imaging genetics cohort, and a great source to study many imaging genetics topics.

Angelien Heister

Since February 2000 I work at the department of Human Genetics. At the Researchlab for Multifactorial Diseases within the department I am responsible for the supervision of technicians, I co-supervise students and support the management. I work as a project manager for the international IMpACT group. Together with Janneke Dammers I am currently responsible for the development and coordination of the IMpACT website.

Nina Roth Mota

I earned my PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology in 2013 and was working as a post doctoral researcher at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre/Brazil. During my PhD I spent one year in King's College London working in collaboration with Prof. Philip Asherson – one of the PIs of the IMpACT UK group. I am currently working as a post doctoral researcher at the department of Genetics at the Radboudumc, Nijmegen.

Marieke Klein

I studied medical biology at the Radboud University of Nijmegen and became especially interested in neurobiology and imaging genetics. In 2013 I started my PhD project in the group of Barbara Franke. Because we still know very little about the genes and genetic variants underlying the development of ADHD, I first aim to identify novel genes for ADHD by combining linkage analysis and whole exome sequencing in large ADHD families. Second, I want to investigate how the brain is affected by genes causing ADHD and how alterations of brain structure and function by such genes contribute to the cognitive deficits and symptoms observed in ADHD. To study the link between genes and brain structure and function, and the behavior of adult ADHD patients and healthy individuals, I combine advanced genetics with the analysis of neuroimaging data (both functional and structural MRI).

Maria Amato

With a background in biological sciences and a master in cognitive neuroscience, I am now a PhD in the Research lab ‘Multifactorial Diseases’ at the Department of Human Genetics, Radboudumc (supervisors Martine Hoogman & Alejandro Arias Vasquez). My contribution to the IMpACT 2 project during the next 4 years will consist in investigating the relationship between the gut microbiome and emotional dysregulation in ADHD. Although emotional dysregulation is not considered an intrinsic component of ADHD in the DSM-5 , literature on ADHD demonstrates that problems in emotional regulation are frequent and strongly affect the quality of life. Moreover, brain regions involved in emotion processing show structural and functional alterations in ADHD. Since the gut-brain axis links the centers for emotional processing to the gut, the microbiota hosted here could represent one of the environmental factors (partly) responsible for emotional dysregulation in ADHD. To test this hypothesis, I will combine neuroimaging techniques with microbial taxonomic analysis.

Myriam Löffler

I work as a research assistant for the Dutch IMpACT site. I’m responsible for the inclusion of patients and healthy participants. Next to that I coordinate the phenotypic database. Together with Angelien Heister, I am also responsible for the development and coordination of the website.